Skanda in Georgia

I'm writing this post from Athens, Georgia, where today we de-installed a few works of art that we loaned from the Columbia University art collection. The exhibition at the Georgia Museum of Art, which closed yesterday, was "Images of Awakening: Buddhist Sculpture from Afghanistan and Pakistan." It revolved around an amazing new acquisition they have received: a 5th-century Buddhist head from Hadda (their image online currently is pre-conservation; trust me, it's gorgeous). The exhibition included loans from a few collections to narrate more fully the story of art, mostly Buddhist in nature, from the region once known as Gandhara, a crossroads for Western and Eastern cultures from the time after Alexander the Great to nearly the 7th century. Today, of course, this region is a political quagmire because of the Taliban and Isis, which is partly why a show like this in Georgia (traditionally, a more-conservative state) becomes so important. In my role as Curator of Art Properties at Columbia, I can say that we were very pleased to be able to participate in this exhibition and loan four small schist stone sculptures to this. Three of them were Buddhist in nature, but the work you see here actually has origins in Hinduism. This is somewhat surprising as Hinduism was not yet fully developed as we know it today, although its earlier origins as Vedism were culturally entrenched throughout the Indian sub-continent. A sculpture of a Hindu deity from this region, during a time when Greek-inspired art was influencing Buddhism, arguably demonstrates how globalism has always impacted art and is not a 21st-century phenomenon.

The figure represents Skanda, the god of war and son of Shiva and Parvati. It dates from the 4th to 5th century. His mythological origin is rather fascinating, and a bit provocative--curiously, it seems to bear some relationship to the Greek story of the birth of Aphrodite, goddess of love (both born from water, seed thrown into the water, etc.). Despite its fragmented state today, this work has held up well (it had some minor conservation in order to be shown, so thank you Jones Abbe Art Conservation). The sculpture shows the god not with multiple heads but rather in a warrior stance holding what once was a spear and, in his other hand, a peacock, the animal with which he is associated. That makes for another interesting analogy, as peacocks in Greek mythology are associated with Hera, queen of the heavens, and seen as a symbol of marriage. Is another love/war cultural emblem at work here? Perhaps. Peacocks are beautiful birds, particularly when they display their shimmering iridescent feathers, but they are also notoriously loud and vicious. I guess all is fair in love and war.